Jo Brand

Victoria Wood to host Sky1 comedy night

Victoria Wood is to host a night of comedy from performers including Jo Brand at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, with the event being broadcast on Sky1.

It may have escaped your notice, but the current series of one of 2010's best comedies quietly came to an end last night. Set in a careworn NHS geriatric ward, Getting On has drawn critical acclaim, but negligible viewing figures.

While I appreciate that a rawly naturalistic tragicomedy suffused with the stench of sickness and mortality will never be a ratings blockbuster, it would be nice to see more love for this overlooked gem.

Written by and starring Joanna Scanlan, Vicki Pepperdine and former psychiatric nurse Jo Brand, Getting On is the antithesis of your average mainstream medical confection: a defiantly unglamorous depiction of Britain's healthcare system, staffed not by selfless angels, but by flawed human beings muddling through as best they can under thankless circumstances. Skating deftly on a hairpin between comedy and pathos, it depicts a profession in which the abiding concerns are bureaucracy, people management and death.

This was never more strikingly illustrated than in the scenes in which the elderly Scottish woman who had been slowly dying throughout the series, finally, inevitably expired. Her poor daughter, unable to accept what had happened, tearfully and tetchily instructed her to wake up, as if it was all just a sick joke: a heartbreaking sketch of grief, emblematic of the programme's understatement.

Sister Den (Scanlan) and Nurse Kim (Brand) went through the practiced motions of comforting the bereaved and dealing with the deceased. But they also argued over what to do with the dead woman's untouched lunch.

Keen to vacate another much-needed bed, Den told the bewildered daughter that the body had to be moved immediately. She was bundled from the hospital to deal with her pain elsewhere, while her mother was abruptly wheeled away in full view of the other patients. As a blunt, desperately sad illustration of Getting On's core themes of life's cyclical grind and the pragmatic demands of NHS medical care, it couldn't have been bettered.

Director Peter Capaldi - Scanlan's co-star from The Thick of It, of which this is a spiritual relative - is to be commended for his sensitive handling of this material. His appropriately sickly, washed-out colour palette and the authentic performances from his excellent cast combine to create a bleakly enthralling atmosphere unlike any other British sitcom.

Doesn't sound like a laugh riot? Well no, it isn't, but nor is it trying to be. The humour arises naturally from character, the situations rooted in reality. Getting On is poignant, funny, profound even. Here's hoping for a speedy return.

"Fly on the wall" possibly isn't the most hygienic way to describe a hospital comedy, but this second series for Jo Brand's ward-based series has been all about the slightly grubby details. Successful as a nurse? Then you're likely to be a failure as a human being. Good with people? You'll never prosper. It's a potentially pretty bleak prospect, it's true, but, directed with lightness by Peter Capaldi, the show creates a real empathy for and between its characters. Tonight, Dr Pippa receives some disappointing news and Beattie's stay in London comes to an end.

The relentlessly deadpan comedy about life on a geriatric ward continues and as ever there are some uneasy and touching moments amid the scatological humour. In tonight's penultimate episode of the series, a graduate nurse causes friction between Den (Joanna Scanlan) and Kim (Jo Brand), and Beedy Fyvie (Lindy Whiteford), who has been travelling from Scotland to visit her dying mother, is once again pushed aside by the dismissive management staff. Elsewhere, Pippa (Vicki Pepperdine) suffers the humiliation of having to reapply for her own job.

Getting On review

Getting On would seem to scotch any lingering prejudice that women are less funny than men. Principals Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicky Pepperdine also wrote the partly ad-libbed show, and bring to life a comedy of the half-resented, half-generous sacrifices of dedication.

Brand plays nursing auxiliary Kim, supervised by Scanlan as Sister Den Flixter; both engage in constant half-cock skirmishes with consultant Pippa Moore (Pepperdine). The show has grasped and exploits a deeper-than-surface reality: that the health service, shorn of a chain of clear command, is a place of overlapping baronies that must bargain with each other for time and resources.

Thus, in last week's episode, Kim has Sister Den assigned to assist her as a moonlighting agency nurse in the middle of the night - and the two struggle over who has the right to give orders.

At the same time, Dr Moore seeks Kim's aid as a witness to an "inappropriate incident" earlier and is stymied because Kim "doesn't like legal things". Where "do it because I say so" is absent, a low-level insubordination, which is also an assertion of dignity, spreads like a fungus - and in that is the comedy.

Getting On just keeps getting better. Well into the second series, and the geriatric ward comedy continues to combine Ken Loach style social realism with laugh out loud funny, without compromising either.

There are times when Getting On is so poignant and melancholy that it seems wrong to laugh, but I always do anyway. It is by far the best comedy on TV at the moment, and frequently the best drama as well. And to think I used to believe Jo Brand couldn't act.

On what should be a dull nightshift, nurse Kim Wilde plays solitaire on the computer. Bliss. Except Kim's hopes of a quiet night prove to be forlorn when, first, she's left alone on the ward because the night sister leaves early, and then B4 welcomes an emergency admission whose condition is unusual enough to attract the attentions of ambitious Dr Moore. If this weren't difficult enough, Kim also has to contend with a tired and emotional Den (teary phone message to Hilary: "Maybe we could try for a baby . . ."). Controlled mayhem, beautifully anchored by deadpan Jo Brand's comic timing.

Jo Brand to write one-off BBC drama

Jo Brand has revealed that she is writing a new drama for the BBC.

Last week's episode was metaphorically dark; this one is literally dark, as nurse Kim (Jo Brand) is on the night shift. Some clever plot twists mean Sister Den and Dr Pippa also manage to find themselves in B4 outside their usual hours: Den proves to be more trouble than she's worth and Pippa believes she's discovered a major medical event, before it collapses spectacularly around her ears. As ever, this contains some flashes of true comic brilliance.

A repeat of C4's live comedy extravaganza from London's 02 Arena earlier this year in which 23 of our funniest people (and Michael McIntyre) competed to win our laughs in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Charity. Take your pick from Alan Carr, Noel Fielding, Catherine Tate, Bill Bailey, Mitchell & Webb, Jack Dee, Jack Whitehall, Kevin Eldon, Lee Evans, Rob Brydon, Sean Lock, Jo Brand, Jason Manford, Fonejacker, Andy Parsons and Shappi Khorsandi. Phew.